Isaiah 30:22Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

It seems appropriate for both the Gentiles who are drawn by faith to the truth and the descendants of Israel to embrace this message. There is no contradiction in offering to those who turn away from Hellenistic falsehood, “I will provide you with the bread of affliction and the narrow stream, thus preventing those who flatter you from approaching.” However, the unfortunate Jews were led astray by malevolent teachers, the scribes and the Pharisees, who sought to lure them into following their own imaginations, diverting them from the teachings of Moses and enticing them to heed human doctrines and traditions.

You will cast aside the adornments of your refined silver and the framework of your fashioned silver, dismissing them as the impurity of a woman undergoing purification; you will say to it, "Be gone." When you come to recognize the truth, those who mislead you will not approach you, for your eyes will behold your guide, and your ears will continuously hear the message, "This is the path, follow it," avoiding turning to the right or the left. In doing so, you will shatter and disperse all falsehoods and idols, as well as the facsimiles of truth that the skilled orators have crafted in the brilliance of their rhetoric, symbolizing silver, and according to the principles of wisdom, representing gold. You will regard them as so defiled that you will liken them to the impure blood of a woman in the process of purification, which the Septuagint translates differently as the water of a woman having purification.